This is where the pseudonyms gather to show off their wares. Come frustrated hack and unpublished journos, share your work with those less and more fortunate than yourselves.
email entries to pseudscorner@hotmail.co.uk for consideration

Friday, November 7, 2008

Red Rum was a Robot! - donwendyagain

Do you remember when sporting nostalgia was good? You would sit around in the pub with your mates having a few swift ones and inevitably the conversation would turn to sport. Who was the best boxer? Who was the best striker? Who was the best hooker? Hey, it’s a bunch of pissed lads, there was no way sex was staying out of the conversation!

Everyone would chuck in their tuppence worth and if the creative juices were flowing the finer points of an argument could last for days, weeks and even longer than some marriages as the ridiculous was mixed freely with the ever more ludicrous in support of spurious claim after nonsensical assertion. Maradona didn’t actually handle the ball and it was just a trick of the light that made it appear as if he had, Kevin Moran played the ball and Peter Reid dived to get him sent off in the 1985 Cup Final or my personal favourite Red Rum was really a robot because you never saw him relieve himself on the course and they had a real horse for public appearances and stable visits.

But those days are mostly gone as any time such an argument begins it is over before it has a chance to flourish as we have all seen the historical events in question hundreds of times on You Tube. We are also losing any chance of future talking points as some smart arse with some fancy computer technology, usually Sky’s resident know it all Andy Gray, has already proven that the ball was over the line before geeky Nigel has got the post match round in. They have even turned the technology on our beloved controversies of yesteryear and now we know conclusively that the 3rd goal was not over the line.

Sure we still talk over the odds and ends but it has lost its soul simply because we all know what really happened. Whoever said knowledge was power was talking out of their fundament as knowledge steals away the doubt that is essential for any debate. Oh for a return to the days when you could argue about just how good Bank’s save from Pele was without being able to dial it up instantly on You Tube or even just how real or unreal Red Rum was.

very nice work, donwendyagain. You managed to combine a feel for nostalgia with a nice starting point for an argument - just what they wanted over at GU, if you ask me.

Except....that hooker joke. And right at the start, too. There's no coming back from that ;)

People will always find ways to be nostalgic, and even the Internets, with their complex series of tubes, can't stop that. And, if necessary, we'll just fill in the nostalgia gaps with some good old speculation - like why Gerrard and Lampard can't play together; or why they can.

bluedaddy - my granddad acted as unofficial local bookie for the Grand National that year, and, it being a more patriotic time, everyone on the street bet on the Queen Mother's nag, Devon Loch. My own Mum claims to this day that it was the sheer force with which her Dad was screaming "Drop dead!" at the TV screen that made the horse fall over.

I don't like horse racing, but I've just watched the race again for the tenth time at least. I was 9 years old when I saw it live and too proud to shed a tear for big, black, beautiful Crisp - but I'm not now.

Whats wrong with the hooker joke!!!!! Just kidding, to be brutally honest I wrote the piece in 10 minutes after work on Monday evening, after a once over with the spell checker I sent it in. I hope to have a bit more time for this week's piece.

MOTM, I have always respected your opinion and I thought we got on ok even if we do inevitably cross swords from time to time. Thank you for your kind comments here.

"MOTM, I have always respected your opinion and I thought we got on ok..."

Don - I have always respected your opinion and I thought we got on ok too.

We agree on something!!!

If you can do this in ten mins, it would be great to see what a bit more time produces, so I hope you'll post here in the future. I've just spent a hour and a half writing a SPOTY entry, but most of that was finding and embedding links. Sometimes the writing just flows.

A nice piece of work don - a good flow to the prose and you made your point well.

What do others think about the choice of the three finalists? Not trying to have a go at their pieces (and I liked Madame Humpty's effort) but I have now read a few on here that IMHO are at least the equal of two of the three finalists.